Reflections 4: For Old Times' Sake
by Jainie Starr
Summary: Brian meets with a reticent Curt in an effort to make peace. [Final installment - for now!]


Reflections of a Demon 4:  
For Old Times' Sake

It was chilly. Nasty weather. Rainy. The sky was white and so clear. Perhaps it would snow, soon. 

I absently chewed at the hangnail on my thumb as I stared out the window that overlooked the street, quietly scanning the faces as they passed the café. Sitting there, I'd pick out one face, one person in particular and wonder what they were heading towards... or, rather, what they might be walking away from. That woman loaded down with shopping bags ... was she someone's mother? Was she on her way home or was she homeless? Did those bags contain expensive last-minute Christmas presents for the kiddies or the last few possessions she had to her name? Was that man in the glasses standing on the corner across the street some kind of missionary or was he just an average Joe? 

Would Curt come? I'd left the message with his service; they'd told me they'd get it to him as soon as he got back into town. It was only wishful thinking on my part, really. I didn't think he'd even bother to call me back. I suppose I was just... hoping. 

When I got the call and, ultimately, the good news, I stood there, stock-still, lips pursed tightly shut, gripping the receiver in my fist -- so great was the urge to run to the window, fling it open and yell, "Did you hear that, people?! He said yes! He's agreed to meet me!" 

But then I had to remind myself. this wasn't going to be the start of a new chapter in our lives, it was merely the much anticipated closing of the last one -- nearly fifteen years had gone since we'd seen each other last. After this, with luck, we could both start new books and get on with our lives. 

I'd come back to New York. had been drawn there, really. Some unknown force had begun pushing me, telling me that I needed to go, that I had to go. There was something that I needed to do to finally have the peace that I so craved -- the peace that had evaded me for fifteen long, empty years. 

I reached into my jacket pocket with my free hand and ran my fingers over the box, the swirls and whorls on the pads of my fingers snagging on its soft, velvety covering. Something about the texture and shape of it provided me a puzzling sort of comfort and courage. It had taken me only moments to find it -- it'd been stuck up on the top shelf in my closet, right where I'd left it, in a shoebox full of the newspaper and magazine clippings that Mandy had saved. 

I remembered Mandy sitting on the carpet, hundreds of fan magazines scattered around her on the floor as she carefully clipped out each article or photo featuring me or herself and dropped them into the shoebox. She told me she'd like to have some sort of record of our lives together -- a box of fond memories we could pull out and sift through when we were an old, gray couple living together in the old folk's home. "We're going too fast to remember any of it, now," she confided to me one night with a giggle. 

We were going too fast to remember any of it... and did too much in too short a time to appreciate any of it. 

Not surprisingly, no photos of Curt or articles that mentioned him ever went into that box. 

Mandy had worked so hard collecting all of those articles and snapshots... she should have taken them with her when she left. But instead, she left the box of clippings at our place when she left me. Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. Maybe Mandy just couldn't bear to look at me... by the time she threw in the proverbial towel on our marriage even I couldn't stand the sight of me. 

What does that mean, I wonder...? When you look into the mirror and don't see much of anything worth liking anymore? When there's nothing you'd like better than to smash the glass away and stare at the blood on your hands, instead of the jagged remainders of your own reflection? 

A psychiatrist probably would have been helpful to me after the whole assassination hoax. But I lost everything... my wife, my lover, my career. I'd been a rock star, on top of my game, and yet there I was, so broke, I could barely afford a cup of tea, let alone a shrink. 

I didn't even have enough money to buy a gun and put a proper end to myself. I could almost see the headlines -- 'Maxwell Demon dies again... this time, by his own hand.' 

I winced and drew my thumb away from my mouth... I'd bitten down so hard I'd drawn blood. I snatched a napkin out of the dispenser sitting on the table, dipped it into the glass of ice water sitting by my hand and carefully wiped the blood from the bite mark. 

The tiny bell mounted on the café door jingled as it was pushed open, alerting the staff to arriving customers. I glanced up and felt my heart plummet right into the pit of my stomach. In the wake of a strong gust of chilled morning air, cigarette smoke and the faintest scent of leather, there he stood. A cigarette pinched between his thin lips, face grim, brows creased. There was a distinct air of solemnity about him, now. It was as if his eternally youthful, carefree spirit had finally caught up with the rest of him and came face to face with the overwhelming magnitude of the pain his body, mind and heart had been subjected to over the years. He looked older, but just as handsome as I remembered... maybe even more so. They say that sometimes when you break up with someone, you have a tendency to deify the other person, put them on a pedestal. You start to think of them as perfect, almost angelic, beings... even if they weren't. But there he stood and I realized that in the fifteen years we'd been apart, I hadn't deified him, I knew he wasn't perfect, and I knew he wasn't entirely blameless... but he was still so very beautiful. 

Curt's head turned and his eyes slowly swept over the left half of the room -- looking for me, I gathered. He glanced over his right shoulder to regard the other side of the café and his eyes scanned each of the booths slowly, working his way forward, eyes gleaming dark, predatory gray. I took a deep breath and raised my hand, waved, in an effort to catch his attention. Those eyes finally leveled on me and I could almost see his eyes harden, grow even more colder, as they took in the sight of me. I quickly stuffed the bloodied napkin into my coat pocket and folded my hands together in front of me, attempted the warmest smile I could manage... and pretended that I couldn't see that Curt quite obviously didn't want to be there. 

He marched over to the booth and took a seat across from me, folding both arms on the table top, eyes boring into me intently as if trying to see into my soul and discover just what I was up to. It shamed me to think that it was I that had planted that thorny seed of cynicism in his heart; it was now a black, full-grown bloom, dripping with poison, anguish and suspicion. And it was all my doing. 

"You look well," I began softly. Curt said nothing, merely scowled at me. The waitress approached carefully -- as if sensing the tense energy snapping and snarling between the two of us -- and cleared her throat, offering the both of us a kindly smile. 

"Coffee, black," Curt addressed the waitress, his tone low and measured. She turned to me, pen poised. 

"I'll have the same, please," I offered her a wan smile as she turned and walked back to the counter to fetch our coffee. 

For some inexplicable reason, I felt a dizzying sense of déjà vu -- like we'd done just this very same thing before -- and then I realized, we had. But the only way it would be a true recreation of our first meeting (our first _proper_ meeting, that is - when Curt was conscious, or at least... partly conscious) was if Jerry were sitting next to me, droning on about setting Curt up with a record deal, waving his stogie about, punctuating his jargon-laden sentences with it. 

Curt just sat there and stared at me... didn't say a single word. To say his silence was unsettling would be an understatement. 

The waitress returned with our coffee and beat an immediate retreat. Curt reached over and grabbed a fistful of sugar packets from the holder sitting to one side of the table. He smacked them against the edge of the table to settle their contents (a thoroughly annoying habit that had, I noticed, endured through our years apart), then ripped the top edges off of several of them and dumped the sugar into his coffee, tossing the empty packets aside. He unwrapped his silverware, picked out the spoon and stirred his coffee, eyes fixed on the cup as if he was determined not to look at me. I took a sip of my coffee, set the cup back down on the table, both of my hands wrapped around it... the chill that had sunk its teeth into me as I'd walked to the café still hadn't gone away. 

That habit of Curt's, however, even though it was just as irritating to me as it always had been... on some level, it brought me comfort.... because I never thought I'd ever be with Curt again to witness that odd little ritual. 

"Curt --" I began softly. 

"What the hell d'you want, Brian?" he growled, finally making eye contact with me. For a moment, I wished that he had just kept his eyes on his mug. "Why did you wanna see me?" 

"I just wanted to... to see you. See how you were doing." To me, it had felt like a perfectly valid reason at the time, but once I'd said it out loud, it seemed like nothing more than a pitiful excuse. 

"Why the fuck did you call? What, you wanted to check up on me? See if I'd finally hit bottom or what?" 

"God, no! No, nothing like that," I shook my head. "No." 

"Then what? What do you want from me?" Sharply. 

"Nothing, I -- I don't want anything from you," I slipped my hand back into my pocket, ran my fingers over the box, gripped it tightly in my fist. "I just wanted to say..." a deep, shaky breath, "I -- I'm sorry. I'm just so sorry. I know that saying that doesn't even begin to make up for what I did to you and I know that you can't ever forgive me and that it won't change anything, but I just wanted to tell you. I wanted you to hear me say it. I'm so glad you agreed to meet me so that I could." 

The words came out in agonizing fits and starts and by the time I was finished, tears were rolling down my cheeks freely. I didn't bother to wipe them away. My fingers trembled as they gripped the coffee mug and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get them to stop. Curt slumped back in his seat and I could see the torrent of emotions flickering in his eyes -- disbelief, shock, sadness, relief, pain... and warmth. Warmth? 

"And I wanted -- wanted to give you this," I sniffled as I pulled the box from my pocket and placed it on the table top between us. 

"Brian, I don't want this," Curt replied softly, even as his hand stole out to brush over the velvet lid. "I don't want anything from you. Ever again." 

"I know," I swallowed around the lump in my throat as Curt's fingers stroked the box, much like I had just moments before he arrived. "I bought that about ten years ago. Don't know why, really... I just saw it in a shop window one day and the next thing I knew, I'd bought it. And the whole time, I kept thinking to myself, 'Curt's gonna love this,' but that was before I remembered..." another tear streaked down my face, heavy and hot, and at that moment, I wanted nothing more than to disappear -- just vanish into thin air, dissolve, as if I'd never even existed. 

To think that the absence of my existence would have made so many peoples' lives easier stung, but it stung even more knowing that I could have made things easier for the people around me when I had the chance, yet I did not. 

Curt nodded slowly, thoughtfully as he picked the tiny box up and lifted the lid -- inside, on a velvet-covered cushion the same shade as the velvet that covered the box itself, lay a tiny silver pendant dangling on its chain. A pendant in the shape of a single wolf's paw print. 

"Brian, I can't accept this," he closed the lid and placed the box back on the table, fingers pressing against the lid as he moved to slide it back over to me. I reached out to stop him and my hand fell on top of his, before he had a chance to pull it back. My eyes met with his and it was like a circuit closing -- I could feel his electricity thrumming through me. 

"No, please. Take it. I want you to have it." I pulled my hand away and laced my hands together in front of me. "I bought it for you." 

"Well..." Curt picked up the box again, turned it over in his hands slowly, considering. He shook his hair out of his eyes, ran his thumb thoughtfully over the velvet. "All right." Just the barest sliver of a smile as he tucked the box into his jacket pocket. 

"You're welcome," I smiled and started to wipe my tears away with my fingers, feeling more than a bit awkward. 

"No, here," Curt snatched a napkin from the dispenser and handed it to me. 

"Thank you." I took the napkin from him and daubed away my tears with a laugh. "No mascara to ruin anymore, at least." 

"Yeah," a wry grin. "You look good, though." 

"Thank you," I practically gasped. Maybe I was making some progress, after all. "So do you." 

"Nah," he sat back in his seat, dug in his coat pocket for his cigarettes. "I look like hammered shit." 

"No, you don't, Curt." I replied emphatically with a shake of my head. "You do not!" 

"But being clean'll do that to ya, I guess," he chuckled ruefully as he lit his cigarette. 

"Really?" This time I did gasp, "You are?" 

"Yeah," he nodded as he reached for his coffee mug, grasping it gingerly with his last two fingers and his thumb, his cigarette pinched between his fore and middle fingers. "For about... eight years, now." 

"That's wonderful," I smiled. 

"Yeah. These days, reality's even trippier than the trips," he smirked at me from behind his mug. 

"Things have changed so much," I agreed softly as I glanced out the window, watching a group of teenage boys skateboarding along the sidewalk. "You live here, still?" 

"Yeah," he nodded, following my gaze to watch the people passing by on the street. "How about you?" 

"Oh, here and there. I sold the flat in Chelsea -- had to, really. Didn't have enough money to pay the rent," at this, I chuckled, hoping that I sounded like my old, aloof self. I couldn't tell by the expression on Curt's face whether or not my half-hearted attempt was a successful one. 

"No shit? I woulda thought for sure that you woulda had money to burn -- seein' as how you did that Tommy Stone thing and all," he took another sip of his coffee. 

"Tommy Stone? Me?" 

"Yeah!" 

"You mean to say you think that I was -- that that was..." I buried my face in my hands and the silence fell heavily on the table between us like the carcass of some large, dead thing... that is, until I started laughing. I wrapped my arms around my middle and laughed until my sides ached. "Oh, god! Hahaha! You thought that I was..." 

"Yeah! So what of it? What the hell's so funny?" Curt chuckled nervously. "You flyin' apart on me, Bri, or what? You mean you're _not_ Tommy Stone?" 

"Oh, god, no!" I sniggered at his thoroughly befuddled expression. It took me a moment to calm myself; I dabbed at my watering eyes with my napkin and took a deep breath. "Might you remember a young woman named Shannon? She worked for me?" 

"The wardrobe chick? Yeah, I remember," he nodded. "What about her?" 

"Well, after my last tour folded, she worked for me for a little while as my personal assistant. By then, you'd left, Mandy had divorced me and I was this far away from being completely penniless, yet she stayed on." 

"She was so in love with you, man," Curt snorted. 

"But after a couple of years of this -- working for a man who was essentially a recluse -- and not getting even a single cent for her troubles, she decided that she needed to move on. Love may make the world go around, but it doesn't pay the rent, as we all know. So Shannon decided to follow Jerry's wonderful example and go into management," a quick pause as I dug into my pocket for my cigarettes. 

Before I had a chance to pull my matches out of my coat pocket, Curt had extended his arm and lit my cigarette for me with his own lighter. I smiled my thanks and rested my head on my hand as I spoke, tapping my cigarette against the edge of the ashtray. 

"So what's Shannon taking after that scum-fuck Jerry Devine have to do with you not being Tommy Stone?" 

"Patience, Mr. Wild, I'm getting to that," Curt smirked as he flicked his lighter closed and placed it back on the table next to his cigarettes. "So, in any case... where was I? Oh, yes. Well, Shannon worked for several years, trying to find an act that wasn't completely vile, but suffice it to say, she had no luck. Finally, she stumbled upon this one git... I can't even remember his name, now, but she just knew he'd be a star." 

"And where did you hear this from?" He sat back in his seat and slid his cup over towards the edge of the table as the waitress returned to refill our mugs. A moment of strained silence settled over the table, lifting only after the waitress had withdrawn and was well out of earshot of our conversation. 

"From her! She called me a while back and told me the whole story, convinced that for some reason I'd give a shit," I replied after taking a deep drag on my cigarette. "So anyway, she told me that she'd discovered this prat and that he was going to be a star, that she was going to make him a star. Then she told me that she'd given him a stage name, since his real name didn't have the right ring to it. She named him after me." 

"Jesus, Brian... that's fuckin' creepy." Curt let a deep breath out in a short, raspy huff. "And you went along with it?" 

"Well, in a way, I suppose she thought that she was doing me a favor. My name -- or at least, a _version_ of my name, anyway -- would be up in lights again." 

"Yeah, that's real thoughtful of her and all, but ... have you _seen_ this asshole she gave your name to?" Curt's face was pinched up with distaste. 

"Oh, yes, I've seen him," I sighed. "He's nothing at all like me. The music, the clothes and his face -- have you seen him?! I mean, taken a good, close look at him? Christ, we look nothing alike! We're about the same age, but he looks like one of the zombies from _Night of the Living_ bloody _Dead_!" 

"Got that right," Curt laughed. 

"Forget being flattered -- maybe I should sue Shannon for defamation of character." 

"I gotta admit, when I came in a few minutes ago and saw you, I was relieved," an almost sheepish grin. 

"I can't believe that you thought that was me...! Curt, really! How could you?! Imagine me in those clothes," I shuddered and he cackled loudly in turn. "Well, how the hell was I supposed to know? I mean, by that time, I hadn't laid eyes on you in, what, ten years? For all I knew, that _was_ you!" Curt scratched a hand through his hair and leaned back, propping both arms along the top edge of the booth. "This... friend of mine thought for sure it was you. Swore up and down that it was. He's gonna be real disappointed when I tell him he was on the wrong track." 

"I find that rather funny, don't you? I mean, we knew each other better than anyone else... but then we don't see each other for ten years and you forget what I look like." The words were meant to have a sardonic lilt to them, but for some reason they came out sounding so very bitter; I almost cringed at the sound. 

"We only thought we knew each other, then," he replied as he grabbed another handful of sugar packets and poured their contents into his coffee. 

"I'd like to think I knew you, once... a long, long time ago." I said wistfully, almost to myself, as I rested my elbow on the table and propped my chin in the palm of my left hand. "And I thought I knew myself. I mean... does it feel like fifteen years have gone by to you?" At this, Curt shrugged, his eyes clouded with puzzlement. "One moment, I'm a star, I'm on top of the world, I have you -- hell, the whole bloody world is my oyster! And then in what seems like nothing more than the blink of an eye, fifteen years have gone and here we are, you and I, sitting across from each other in a shitty little waffle house in New York City! And it's like we're strangers, it's as if we never knew each other at all. What happened to us, Curt? Can you tell me that?" 

I let the hand supporting my chin drop onto the table top, fingers splayed out on the tabletop -- an abortive effort on my part to reach for his hand -- I wanted to touch him, hold his hand, but I didn't dare, especially since I didn't know how he'd react. "How did all of it slip by so fast?" 'Why did I ever let you go...?' hung in the air -- drifting between us, amidst the cigarette smoke and the steam that wafted from our coffee cups like a living thing -- making it seem heavier, thicker. 

"You were young and you were stupid... we both were." Curt shrugged as he took a sip of his coffee and placed his mug back on the table, lacing his hands together under his chin. 

"It's like I'm caught in some kind of time warp," I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead for a moment, then hastily raked my fingers through my hair. "Fifteen years have passed since I last saw you and yet the minute you walked through that door, it was as if no time had passed at all. I still feel the same way about you as I did when you left. I mean, I know you take six sugars in your coffee, just like you always did," I gestured to his mug, "but besides that, I know nothing about you! Besides how you take your coffee... what's changed in your life over the past fifteen years? What have you been doing with yourself all this time, Curt?" 

"You really wanna know?" He arched an eyebrow. 

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't." I reached out my hand again, turning it so that my palm was facing upwards, fingers uncurled -- a wordless entreaty that he could either ignore or take me up on -- it was all up to him. "I never took my eyes off you when we were together, but I don't think I ever really _saw_ you before this moment Tell me about you -- I want to know how you are, what you've been doing." 

"What're you askin' me, Brian? I mean... I can't -- if you're asking me if we can try again, I can't -- I'm sorry, but right now, my heart's not mine to give." 

"No, no," I shook my head, even though as I spoke, the single remaining thread of hope -- that I wasn't even aware I'd been clinging to for fifteen years -- finally snapped in two. "I'm not asking you for that; I don't have any ulterior motives, here. I just ... I'd just like to get to know you again," I smiled. "Get to know the _real_ you, this time. And if you're with someone, that's fine, that's great; I understand. But... would you think it especially presumptuous of me if I asked you to... be my friend?" 

"No," Curt shook his head, a soft, rueful grin curling his lips. 

"So, friends then?" I slid my left hand over towards him, my heart fluttering anxiously against my ribs. 

"Yeah, friends," he nodded as he reached out and clasped my hand. 

"It's a start, at least," I gave his hand a squeeze. "I haven't had a friend in such a long time, but now that I do... I can't tell you how relieved I am that it's you." 

Curt's hand was so warm; it immediately chased away the pervading chill in my flesh, making it nothing more than a distant, quickly-fading memory. 

The closing of an old book, the beginning of a new one... who better to start the next chapter of my life with than the man with whom the last one had begun? 

The End (for now!)  
_Reflections of a Demon_


End file.
